


Mulder and Scully's Book of all the Answers

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 17:52:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13506720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Post ep fic for The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat.





	Mulder and Scully's Book of all the Answers

She calls again. And again. It’s been hours. She hasn’t been worried until now, until the point where he’s missed the Knicks game and their regular…she doesn’t even have a name for whatever kind of fucking they do now. She knows it’s more than fucking. And she knows that he’d gladly have her living back in the house but she’s still processing everything, and everything includes whatever the fuck the fucking is.

“Pick up, Mulder,” she says for the twentieth time before staring at the screen in her hand and sighing down to the couch. The couch. The fucking couch. Not the fucking couch but the ‘fucking’ couch. They’ve never made it to the bed. And she kind of likes that. He does too, despite his utterings that he’s too old for this shit. They are old, truth be told. But, she tells him, they are not too old. They will never be too old. Not for this shit. Or this fucking. Or whatever the fuck it is.

“Skinner,” she says standing up again, straightening the hem of her blouse so there’s no gape. “Have you heard from Mulder today?”

His voice is distant, distracted. She can hear muffled groans in the background. She flushes. Walter S Skinner, even older than us, she thinks. “No, Agent Scully. Is there a problem?” He’s even gruffer than usual and she can’t blame him. She imagines Mulder’s pitch at being interrupted mid-coitus. She smothers a laugh and that’s when she knows she’s seriously worried.

“No, no problem, Sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”

She hears more rustling and mumbling. “Scully,” he says, “you know he’s probably just…”

“Squatching…yes, Sir. I do. Thank you.” She hangs up and startles as the phone buzzes. Mulder.

“Mulder, where have you been?” Her pitch is shriller than she intends.

“Looking for answers,” he says and leaves a long silence. She bites her lip, working her way through the catalogue of what his silences have held. None of them has ever yielded anything that has made her smile. “I’m sorry about tonight, Scully.”

“Where are you?”

“On my way home.”

“You missed the game,” she says.

The light on the table flickers and she walks towards it. Her footfalls are clipped on the wooden floor and she realises she hasn’t taken her shoes off. He hasn’t reached for her feet and rolled them between his hands like he usually does. She touches the globe. It’s cool. “Mulder, are you okay?”

The light flickers again and then goes out. He doesn’t answer. She waits.

There’s something about him that she recognises. That hungry look, rapacious mind working through data ready to expound wild theories. There’s something about that look all right. Her stomach fizzes and she tucks her hand across it to pull it in, like a safety belt against the joy ride he’s no doubt going to strap them in for.

“The book, Scully. There are pages missing.”

He’s holding a tome. Weighty, large, like an encyclopedia. “Pages?”

The noise of his fingers slapping against cover resounds around the room. The light snaps on and they both look at it for a split second. “All the Answers. The book the alien gave me.”

Her mouth opens with a pop. This is not what she expected. “This is the book? Mulder, that book was a joke. That whole case was a joke. There was no alien. We didn’t see it. Reggie just made it up. Along with his whole life.”

“No, no, Scully. It wasn’t a joke.”

Now he’s holding the book towards her. She watches the peppery stubble on his chin as he speaks. “It’s satire. No. Not satire. Meta. It’s meta. A statement about us. About the files. About life. It’s…so perfectly true yet so insane that it really jarred, you know? It’s not just about the X-Files and life’s mysteries. It’s about our truth.”

“Truth? Mulder, the man was mentally unstable. We saw him being taken away. That story about the alien and the case was…not the truth. Where did you get the book? I mean, how did you…I’ve never seen you with it.”

The light flickers “I went to see Reggie. He gave it to me.”

She blinks. “You went to see Reggie? Mulder…” It was date night, she wants to add.

“But something’s not right.” He looks at her. “See…the pages are numbered wrong here and again here.”

She sighs and walks to him. The smell of musty pages hits her as she leans around to see. She follows his thumb but the pages are in chronological order. “This is page 352 and then there’s 353 and 354 and 355…Mulder…” her voice trails away.

His face drops. He looks again, shaking his head. “No, Scully. There are pages missing. Look…352 through to 381 are missing.”

She takes the book. “I see every page in order, Mulder. What is this thing about? These are…Mulder? This is the time when you were…” Her throat itches and a knot forms in the pit of it. She flicks back through the book, listening as her heart keeps time with the thump of the pages.

“But when I read it earlier, there wasn’t any mention of this stuff. It was all about the cases. The conspiracies. There wasn’t much of the personal stuff, just the facts.”

She looks at him and tries not to roll her eyes. Facts. Reggie. She should call Skinner again. But then she doubles back. Checks again. “Hold on,” she says. “There does seem to be some pages missing. Here, almost at the start. Look.”

He takes it from her and looks, frowning. “No. The early pages are all there. See, 47 through to 61. They’re right here, Scully. This is when…this is when Duane Barry.” He snaps the book shut and lets his head fall back. “You can’t see the pages from when you were taken. I can’t see them from when I was abducted. And these aren’t the same pages as the ones I read earlier. The book is changing.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not possible, Mulder. How can I see pages you can’t and vice-versa when the book is right here in front of us. There’s only one book.”

“Right,” he says, “one book of our lives spent looking for the truth. This isn’t a book about All the Answers now, it’s a book about our life together.” He’s smiling and his eyes are wet. “About all our answers. He opens the pages again, thumbing through them. “Where does it end, Scully?”

She steps forward and grabs it from him. He lets out a surprised yelp. “Do you really want to know?” The book is hard against her ribs, digging in to her skin. “You can’t ever unsee what you read.”

She takes it to the coffee table and puts it there, pages spilling open. The light flickers and he goes to speak before stopping and turning his head, hands on hips. He stays that way for a while, shoulders rising and falling, jaw flexing. She can see the wildness dissipating. He’s returning to the new version of himself. The one she’s ready to return to.

“You know Scully, maybe I once did. I would have opened the last page. I would have done that first of all, jumped in. But I started reading it from the beginning this time.”

Tears build in her eyes and she sniffs quietly. “But we already know how we got here. It doesn’t matter what the book says. All the answers in here,” she lifts the book towards him and he takes it back, “might not be the same as the answers in here.” She taps him on the chest with a closed fist then lays her head against the spot, listening to his heartbeat. “Maybe we just need to write our own ending?”

The vibration of his chuckle in his Adam’s apple tickles her cheek. “Where do we start?”

She looks up and kisses him. “Where did we really start, Mulder? When I walked into your office? When I survived the cancer?”

His arms are strong around her waist and his fingers are circling the spot where the Ourobouros turns for eternity. “When you came into my bedroom that windy night?” His lips are soft against hers.

“Fox Mulder,” she says, pulling on his hand. “Would you go to bed with me?”

His eyes wander to the couch and his lips split into a half-smile. His head tilts and he holds his eyes shut in a long, slow blink. “I think I might.”

The book is on the coffee table, open at page 682. She tries not to look at it as they walk past. They both do. But its pull is strong.

“What word do you see, Scully?” he whispers.

She smiles up at him. “Love, Mulder. It’s a whole page of love.”

The light goes out.


End file.
